Conference hears bishops are failing on the environment

Writer and broadcaster Mary Colwell has criticised the church hierarchy for failing to speak out more forcefully on the environment.

Addressing the annual National Justice and Peace Network (NJPN) conference in Swanwick, Derbyshire, Ms Colwell, who produced documentaries for the BBC Natural History Unit and has advised the bishops’ conference on environmental issues, declared that although the Church might be highlighting the effects of climate change, it does not amount to “doing the environment”.

“Doing what we can to get to grips with climate change is not ‘doing the environment’, any more than thinking [that] curing cancer will solve all the health problems of humanity,” said Ms Colwell. “Over-fishing isn’t climate change, nor is misuse of fresh water, plastic pollution, destruction of habitats, extinction of species, the pollinator crisis and so on.”

The broadcaster suggested that Catholics could make the world a better place by eating less meat and fish. A meat diet produces twice as much carbon dioxide as a vegetarian one, with grazing taking up 26 per cent of the Earth’s surface. “To be true to our baptism, we should carefully consider not eating meat more than once or twice a week,” said Ms Colwell.

Equally, fish stocks are under threat as never before, with the level of white fish caught in the North Sea down by 46 per cent over the past century. “Promoting fish on Fridays just exacerbates a problem and highlights how little the Church is engaged with what is happening in the world,” she said. “Just doing something simple, cutting down on meat and fish, will make a big difference. Saying why you are doing it tells the world we care.”

The thirty-sixth NJPN conference also heard from the Catholic Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather.

Meanwhile, a major international conference on religion and animals took place this week at St Stephen’s House in Oxford.

During the meeting, organised by the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics (OCAE), more than 150 academics from different religious traditions were told by Deborah Jones, an OCAE fellow, that the Catholic Church was both a blessing and a curse for animals.
In her talk she contrasted the treatment of animals in some Catholic countries such as Spain with the concern for animal welfare espoused by saints such as Francis of Assisi.